Mystical Indians in Jonah Hex

The Jonah Hex movie is out and so are the reviews. The critics have overwhelmingly savaged it, giving it a measly 14% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. This suggests it's one of the worst movies of the year.

The following review is typical:

"Jonah Hex":  Hard-boiled heavy-metal idiocy

Josh Brolin, John Malkovich and Megan Fox's impossible waist can't save a messy screen version of the DC comic

By Andrew O'HehirThe movie goes like this: Jonah shows up someplace, apparently teleporting from Nevada mining camps to New Orleans to rural Georgia (journeys that would take weeks in the 1870s). He mutters incomprehensibly at someone out of the corner of his disfigured mouth and then starts shooting people with his Gatling gun, or his automatic crossbow, or his dynamite revolver. (OK, that one is kind of cool.) How-de-dow-de-dow, go the guitars.

Then he gets badly hurt, or pretty nearly kilt, and the Crow Indian medicine men, muttering "Not this guy again!" in their native tongue, have to dance around and chant and rub oregano on his wounds, causing Jonah to barf up an actual, living crow. (Get it? Get it? Oh, you're right, there's nothing to get.) Then it's back to sultry Megan in the New Orleans whorehouse, although all they do is smooch a little in artfully backlit shots, possibly because this is a PG-13 title and possibly because sexual intercourse might cause her to snap in half at that architecturally improbable 20-inch waist.I gather the Indians give Hex the power to speak to the dead and survive near-fatal wounds. He doesn't have this power in the comic books, where he's a straightforward bounty hunter.

The Crow and a crow

So the Apache Indians in the comic books have become Crow Indians in the movie. Why? For the visual pun of the crow in the mouth, I guess, and no other reason.

Of course, this is based on a mistake, since the Crow don't have anything to do with crows. Here's the story of their name:

Crow NationThe name of the tribe, Apsáalooke (IPA: [əpsaːloːke]), was translated into French by interpreters as gens du corbeaux (people of [the] crows). It means "children of the large-beaked bird," a name given by their neighboring tribe, the Hidatsa. The bird, perhaps now extinct, was defined as a fork-tailed bird resembling the blue jay or magpie.I sure hope these characters didn't make it into the movie:



Crow Indians who look like giant crows? Indians as semi-human beast men? Say it ain't so.

Even if these figures appear in a vision, it isn't cool. The Crow simply aren't associated with crows. Similarly, the Blackfeet don't have black feet, the Creek don't live by a creek, and the Winnebago (Ho-Chunk) don't drive Winnebagos.

Magical mystery tour

I don't know if the Indians do anything exceptionally savage in Jonah Hex. It seems the filmmakers have gone for supernatural and otherworldly rather than brutal and bloodthirsty. Either way, it sounds stereotypical.

Jonah Hex gives us a glimpse into the Hollywood mindset. The filmmakers didn't take the Indians seriously. They used Julia Jones and Asian actors, changed the Apache to Crow, and gave them the power to raise the dead. They didn't take the rest of the West seriously either. The movie probably will fail because of its lack of authenticity.

Fortunately, few people will see this stinker. I don't plan to see it either. Let the latest example of magical Indians die a well-deserved death.

For more on the subject, see Alan Eaglewolf on Jonah Hex and Jonathan Joss on Jonah Hex.